What's better than a little
copper to keep your Pentium 4 processor running nice and cool. However, knowing which cooler is worth its weight
in copper isn't always a straightforward task. The choice becomes even more complicated when you have heatsink
manufacturers adapting K7 cooler designs for the Pentium 4, or simply building P4 heatsinks to fit K7
requirements.

From what we've seen, heatsinks which
support both processors (Pentium 4 and K7) in one go, or even in
different models, often favor one processor over the other. Given that the
Evercool CUW8-715 is a carbon copy of the Evercool CUF-715 for the AthlonXP, it will be interesting
to see how the former performs when faced with the increased thermal interface
of the Pentium 4 synthetic temperature test platform.

The Evercool CUW8-715 is a nice little socket 478 heatsink constructed
of thin copper fins soldered to a rather concise 45x63mm copper base plate. The classy gold
fan blades certainly make this cooler stand out, but just how well the heatsink performs
thermally is a question which remains to be answered.

The Evercool CUW8-715 uses a set of over-the-heatsink clips which work well enough, but can be a
bit tricky to engage in tight spaces.

Evercool
CUW8-715 Heatsink From All Angles

The Fan: To protect the heatsink from inhaling a molex
connector. which could jam the fan impeller, the Evercool CUW8-715 comes with
a black plastic fan grill. While this compliments the whole look of
the cooler, I've always been partial to the wire fan grills instead. Wire grills
do not affect airflow, whereas plastic ones like this can have a
small negative effect on air intake. The fan connects to standard 3-pin fan
header on the motherboard, and supports RPM monitoring.

Heatsink Top: With the
fan removed we can see the fan shroud and interlocking copper fins below. These
assemblies of fins have become really popular, and given that they also increase
assembly speed, are probably part of the reason why copper heatsinks have come down in
price to very reasonable levels. Each fin measures roughly 0.2mm thick, and is spaced
1mm apart.

Side A: From the edge of the Evercool CUW8-715 it's easy to see just how thin those
copper fins are. The base of each fin is folded over 1mm to create
the tab which is then soldered to the copper base. The copper base plate measures 6mm
thick.

Side B: The black aluminum fan support attaches directly
to the copper base with four screws. The shroud doesn't appear to have been designed
to direct fan exhaust back towards the outer fins of the heatsink. Instead, a more stylistic
approach has determined its funky "X" like appearance. The copper fins are 31mm tall, and 70mm
long.

Heatsink Base:

With the copper fins hanging over the small base plate 19mm on either side, I would have expected a
little larger copper base plate. Though, given that this exact same heatsink is
also used in a socket A configuration, this is of little surprise. The base has
a pretty average sanded surface finish, which has left it with a very slightly domed curvature.
The dome is very slight, and I don't expect it to cause any
real problems when mounted on a processor.